The Gallery of Iris's Mistakes
by The Bookbinder's Daughter
Summary: [Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister] In which Iris looks through her sketches, steals a ribbon, and makes a small peace offering to Caspar.


Disclaimer: I own nothing, which sort of negates the whole point of suing me, doesn't it?

It has come to my attention that, counting this, there are a grand total of two _Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister_ fanfics on this site. That's...sad, to say the least. Somebody needs to write more; preferably someone with more talent than I have. Please? I'll give you a Caspar-shaped gingerbread man if you do, or at least eat one with you in mind.

* * *

The sheets bend in a shallow curve around her pinching fingers, gently cupping the stale air, white light and creamy parchment blending into pearly gray. She tilts her hand one way and the narrow lines shimmer as if the charcoal is burning, aglow with the gleam of new satin. She turns her wrist again, and the lines thin, dull, harden; amber and steel and the merest hint of citron peeling apart within the black.

She whisks the sketches out from beneath one another as if performing a magic trick, each change of image heralded by the parchment's abracadabra crackle, like thin twigs in a strong fire. Tulips in a bowl, the shapes blunt, childish, unlovely. Clara, peering through half-closed shutters, her beauty lost through Iris's clumsy rendering. Another attempt at the conch shell, resembling the head of some spiky-feathered bird. Caspar, or what was intended to be Caspar; but the curls are too tight, the neck too thick. She's made him look thoughtless, callow, common. A blandly handsome boy she might have merely passed on the street, for all the personality she's endowed him with. Margarethe, straining Henrika's silks. The top of the linden tree, a jumble of unconnected downward strokes. Ruth, a blob with eyes, although that drawing is closer to the truth than the others. A finch that looks like a shoe with tail feathers. A shoe that looks like a strangled rat. Three more tries at the conch. The Gallery of Iris's Mistakes.

She could burn them, but the smell of smoke makes her retch now. She could tear them with her hands, but Ruth might come running at the sound, and she does not feel like explaining herself. She could hide them somewhere for van Stolk to find, once the house is his; but the thought of laughter, even laughter gone unheard, is worse than smoke.

She could take them to Caspar. A peace offering, a wrongdoing of her own to counter-balance Ruth's guilt, a penance paid in sneers to repay Clara's sacrifice. Freedom for family and scorn for peace. Clara bartered her beauty and Iris will barter her inability to capture it.

The papers slide back together into a neat stack, a tidy layering of mistake over miscalculation over blunder. She ties them neatly with a stolen ribbon, once Henrika's, then Margarethe's, now hers. Her feet carry her through halls that belong to van Stolk, through a door that belongs to van Stolk, down streets that might as well belong to van Stolk, for Haarlem is more his town than hers.

The house belongs to the Master, but its door smells of Caspar; of the fury he splashed across the knob on his way to wreak justice upon them, the frustration he smeared along the step on his return, the love she wills towards him even now, after he has threatened Ruth and ruined Clara.

Her hands full, she kicks the door rather than knocks; once, twice, three times. The Master answers. Caspar is out, he informs her, his voice kind, eyes blameless. Would she like him to pass on a message? His eyes find the ribbon, yellow, meant to be worn with bumblebee silks. A gift?

She could throw her sketches in the Haarlemsmeer and no one would ever know she had tried to capture Caspar's face.

She pushes her bundle into the Master's hands, passing her sins to the sinned against. What message should go with it? A plea for forgiveness, permission to burn her work at his pleasure? Excuses for Ruth -- she was sorry, she didn't know what she was doing, she meant well? That Clara's best interests had not been the Master's?

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words; but surely the speaker did not have Iris's drawings in mind when they said that.

"Tell Caspar..." She pulls her limbs inwards against the wind. "Tell Caspar that I will return for the ribbon."


End file.
